The Odyssey of KP2

by Terrie M. Williams

  “Oh, ho, there it is. Yes!” Cynthia gleefully pointed out a white marble in the middle of the gray screen.

  Images on the computer monitor materialized and dissolved as Cynthia moved the probe across KP2’s right eye and then his left. The story was the same for each: a hard white marble where a clear lens should have been. A sinking feeling began to wash over me.

  “I think the cloudiness has progressed since he was a pup, just as I’d expect it to over time. But it is stable.”

  “So how well can he see?” I asked tentatively.

  “Even with surgery he’d only be able to make out movement and distant objects. He has little near vision and it will only get worse as he grows older.”

  “Why? How did this happen?” I felt my dream of releasing KP2 back to the wild melt in the heated sealarium. I demanded to know whether the cooperative seal lying at our feet—a seal who would never again know the freedom of open water—was a genetic anomaly, a victim of an accident as a youngster, or if there was anything we could have done for him.

  “My impression? Nutrition!” Cynthia replied without hesitation. “Let’s face it. Nothing is better than mother’s milk!” According to the ultrasound specialist, for all the calories provided by the salmon shakes that nourished KP2 in his first days, they were not enough to allow his eyes to grow healthy. Scientific literature is filled with studies championing the developmental benefits of breast milk in humans. The signature fatty acids in mother’s milk are critical nutrients for proper brain growth and nervous system development. Breast-fed babies perform better on intelligence tests and display superior eye function than bottle-fed babies. Nature knows best, and RK22’s legacy of abandonment would forever be imprinted on KP2’s eyes in more ways than one.

  The seal’s original veterinary ophthalmic team, led by Dr. Carmen Colitz, prepared the final report on KP2’s eyes using Cynthia’s ultrasound images. Carmen had traveled the world performing eye exams and cataract surgeries for sea lions and seals from SeaWorld to the Houston Zoo and the Waikiki Aquarium when KP2 was a pup. She had tracked his case from the very beginning and was kind when she noted my team’s disappointment. We had been battling a developmental defect and had just lost the bid for KP2’s freedom.

  “But you’ve done an excellent job with his eye care!” Carmen praised my group. “KP2’s healthy, and the shaded enclosure you built was perfect for preventing his corneas from clouding over. In fact, his eye health is so stable that we can forgo surgery for the immediate future.”

  Reluctantly, I accepted the news. We would have to create another life path for KP2.

  Two weeks later Cynthia sent me copies of the ultrasound images for my files. After a cursory glance I filed them with the rest of the seal’s medical records.

  A few days passed before Cynthia called. “Well, did you see it?” she asked excitedly. “Look at the pictures!”

  Opening the files, I stared at the black-and-white ultrasound images. All I saw were the depressing white marbles that prevented KP2 from living on his own in the wild.

  “Look closer at the picture of his left eye.”

  I turned the image to the side and then started laughing. Both eyes of the seal showed opaque areas with the thickening of his lens starting on the edges of his eyeball and gradually moving inward. KP2 was essentially seeing through hollow marbles that would fill in as he grew older. But the shape of the hollowed areas differed for each lens. Cynthia had spotted an unusual feature in KP2’s left cataract.

  “He has a heart in his eye!” Cynthia exclaimed. Indeed he did. The dark area representing the clear part of KP2’s left lens was heart shaped and as obvious as any valentine.

  As if we didn’t already know that KP2 was blessed with a unique heart, he clearly had one imprinted in the hollow of his left eye to remind us.

  • • •

  ALTHOUGH DISAPPOINTED, I realized that I would settle for a healthy seal. Caught up in what I wanted for KP2, I had forgotten that he faced limitations in his vision every day. The seal was so good at masking those limitations through the use of his other senses that we rarely considered him disabled. He operated with an internal map of his enclosure in his head. The map made him an amazingly mobile animal in controlled environments, but would be insufficient for keeping him safe from unpredictable dangers in the wild waters of Hawaii.

  One of the biggest threats in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, where I had wanted to place KP2, is pollution. Floating marine debris in the form of discarded filament lines, fishing nets, plastics, and ropes creates a lethal obstacle course for swimming marine mammals in the most remote coastal waters on earth. Each year more than fifty-two metric tons of marine debris accumulates on the beaches, on coral reefs, and in shallow lagoons of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. Lost and abandoned fishing gear—particularly large trawl nets and fish nets—is the biggest danger.

  Hawaii is by no means unique in the level of its marine pollution; it is just surprising (and in many ways disheartening) given the remoteness of the islands. Around the world, the switch from natural fibers such as cotton and linen webbing to more durable plastic fishing gear during the past thirty-five years has created an invisible water hazard. Even sighted marine mammals have difficulty detecting floating nets and become hopelessly entangled. Swimming against razor-sharp filament lines, dolphins have been known to accidentally amputate their dorsal fins and flukes. Ropes looped around the necks and bodies of seals and sea lions eventually cut into the skin and strangle the animals.

  “Why can’t someone create strong, dissolvable nets and fishing lines?” I lamented to the fishermen in my family. There had to be a better solution than simply allowing lost fishing gear to drift unimpeded across the waves.

  “They can. But who would be crazy enough to use it?” they said, laughing at me. “The beauty of plastic is that our fishing gear lasts forever!”

  There was no attractiveness in it for me. Such “beauty” came at too hefty an animal price.

  Over the decades of my scientific career I had witnessed the impact of marine pollution on the ocean’s animals and was driven to solve the problem. The level of devastation from pollution is both astounding and unnecessary. Yet few are aware of the impact, due to the remote location and cryptic behavior of marine mammals. I realized this when directing the rescue of hundreds of oiled sea otters following the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska. The clash of Big Oil, big business, the lack of federal and state preparedness, public outrage, and guilt had left otters dying in my hands. The event had been a turning point in my life.

  The drive was reinforced when I moved to the Hawaiian Islands immediately after the spill. Less than a week after my arrival in Kaneohe to work with Puka and Primo, a call came in to the Dolphin Systems veterinary office. A whale had been seen struggling off the coast of Kauai; it appeared to be spouting blood.

  By the time the veterinary team and I arrived on the island, the immature sperm whale had stranded and died. The whale’s last breaths occurred on the opposite side of the island where KP2 would be born eighteen years later. Its massive heart stopped beating on the prime bathing beach of the prestigious Sheraton Kauai Resort, right in front of the $350-per-night ocean-view rooms of mainland honeymooners.

  The resort manager was frantic. The staff at the front desk was visibly shaken, and a depressing air weighed down the tropical fragrance of ginger in the front lobby. A beautiful, statuesque Hawaiian woman working at the reception desk interpreted the whale’s death as a bad sign.

  “Why did this happen?” she quietly asked, seeking a deeper meaning for the decision the ocean had made in depositing the whale on their beach. “Perhaps the hotel should not have been built,” she suggested. “The islands are getting too crowded even for the animals of the surrounding seas. Maybe the oceans are trying to tell us something.”

  Wringing his hands, the m
anager asked us what our next move would be. One of the veterinarians mentioned that we needed to necropsy the whale to determine the cause of death.

  The manager blanched. “Here? You want to cut the dead whale here? No, no, no!” He then disappeared into a back room, groaning as he left.

  It took only a few steps from the lobby to locate the body, resting on its side with its great flukes lapping in the gentle waves. The head of the animal was nearly half its total length. Its stubby pectoral fins stuck out awkwardly from its sides. I was about to place my hand on its gray ridged skin when one of the locals in a flowered shirt stopped me.

  “Is someone going to offer a prayer?” he asked.

  “A prayer?” I repeated, looking to the rest of the team for help.

  “It is customary to say something before you perform a ceremony,” a resort staff member clarified. The team thought a moment and gave the responsibility of the prayer to the lead veterinarian, who offered a few words in Hawaiian before our inspection of the body.

  I had never seen a sperm whale from so close up. The massive animal’s world was the mysterious oceanic trenches that scarred deep into the earth’s crust. In total darkness and at crushing depths the whale lying in front of me would have hunted the giant squid. Now one side of the whale’s body was shredded; the skin hung loosely where it had been scraped along the black, razor-edged volcanic rocks curbing the beach. I found the dark gray skin surprisingly delicate for such a large mammal.

  By the time we walked around the whale once, the resort manager had found a solution for disposing of the enormous carcass. The owner of a nearby sugarcane field would allow us to borrow heavy equipment to move the whale and then bury the remains in one of his fields.

  Moving a dead whale is no small feat, and this one was located between the expensive hotel and a lagoon surrounded by crumbling volcanic cliffs. But within twenty-five minutes, a large, steel-reinforced crane and flatbed truck arrived. The crane operator, a muscular Hawaiian with brown chest and belly protruding from a loose shirt, whistled when he saw the situation.

  After assessing the problem, the crane operator lowered a cable, which we caught and quickly secured around the whale’s peduncle by its flukes. Slowly the crane began to pull. At first the whale did not budge; its dead weight and gravity fought the crane. Eventually the flukes cleared the water, and then the hind end flexed up. Billowing blue smoke from a stack, the crane lifted further as the steel cable strained and groaned under the dead weight. Finally it was able to raise the body and lastly the head of the whale.

  The body of the whale swayed slightly in the wind as the operator slowly swung the enormous carcass up and over a cliff edge. In a remarkably gentle move, the Hawaiian operating the crane lowered the carcass of the whale lengthwise along the flatbed truck. It could not have been done with more care than a relative lowering a loved one into a final resting place.

  We drove for half an hour up toward the center of the island into the middle of acres of sugarcane. Deep red dust choked us as we followed the truck and dead whale along the rutted dirt road deep into the field. At last, the whale was laid in a clearing of brick red dirt surrounded by green swaying sugarcane. From this point we could see the turquoise waters of the Pacific Ocean on two sides of us. It seemed a fitting prism-colored burial place for a marine animal whose ancestors had once lived on land more than fifty million years ago.

  The team spent the rest of the afternoon under the unrelenting sun working on the whale. We checked the whale’s skin for telltale signs of parasites, took samples of saliva and blowhole mucus for culturing in the laboratory. Huge flensing knives on wooden handles were brought out to cut through the tissue and bone. We inspected the blubber for signs of starvation and the giant heart for congestive failure. The lungs were the only internal organs to show any signs of abnormality; there was a slight indication of pneumonia.

  Sun-darkened cane field workers came to watch and eventually became bored, leaving us to our grisly task. The sun, too, faded off into the west, casting pink and purple shadows over us and the remains of the whale. We were soaked in blood and the fluids of the whale as well as our own sweat. There was little left to do, although we were frustrated and unsatisfied with the progress of our necropsy. Unless the lab reports showed something unusual, there was no obvious reason for this young whale to have died so suddenly. He was healthy. So why, we queried each other, would a healthy whale throw itself on a beach to die?

  Only one more organ awaited our inspection: the stomach. We had delayed this unpleasant task to the last moment. The stomach juices of whales are unbelievably foul, and all of us dreaded the oils and acids that would permeate our skin and clothing for weeks in spite of numerous washings and bleachings. Whenever our hands would pass near our face for the next month, we would detect the telltale smell of bile and whale carcass. Our plan was to evaluate the stomach as quickly and simply as possible.

  Light was fading fast on the tropical island and the headlights of several trucks were turned on to illuminate the exposed side of the whale. They cast eerie shadows on the carcass, and the words of the woman at the reception desk of the resort haunted me in the cane field. Maybe the oceans were trying to tell us something.

  We decided to avoid a big, oily gastric mess by making a three-inch-incision along the side of the whale through the blubber and muscles overlying the stomach and finally into the stomach itself. Because I had the longest and thinnest arms, I was elected to feel around inside the stomach and report what I felt back to the group. (In truth, I believe the veterinary team saw this as my initiation rite to the islands.)

  I swallowed and resolutely stuck my hand and arm into the slit under the glare of truck headlights and with the wooden sound of cane stalks rustling all around us. At first there was nothing much to feel, smooth tissue edges and slippery fluids. Then something hard and slithery passed by my fingers; I couldn’t tell what. In the dark and without being able to see my arm up to the elbow, I first thought of parasites. Nematodes, cestodes, and innumerable, indefinable spineless worms that I despised raced through my mind.

  Squeezing my eyes shut, I tried to concentrate on what I was feeling. Suddenly, my hand reached something that had more substance, something hard that didn’t slip loosely out of my grasp when I squeezed down. I decided to bring up what I could and quickly dump it into the bucket of water at my feet. In a single motion I grabbed and threw everything within my reach into the bucket.

  In the dark shadows the team couldn’t tell what had been brought up from the whale’s stomach. At first it looked like the partially digested tentacles of an octopus, and then some type of elongate brown worms. The veterinarian who had performed the blessing took a piece of dried cane stalk and began to probe the brown ball, trying to unwind it. The mystery unraveled with his probings. What I had grabbed was not biological at all; it was man-made. The long tentacles turned out to be rope. I had extracted rope and nylon-filament twine from the stomach of the young whale. There were yards and yards of fishermen’s netting. It was the kind of netting thrown into the oceans to drift aimlessly on currents to catch squid until the owner retrieved it at a later date.

  Wide-eyed, we quickly pieced together the demise of the young sperm whale lying at our feet in the Hawaiian cane field. Ten pieces of netting were eventually retrieved from the animal’s stomach. Thick brown twine nets, razor-sharp filament-line nets, as well as large nets and small pieces of net had tangled together. In searching for food, he had learned that the easiest squid were found entangled in these drift nets. But the filament nets were invisible to his underwater X-ray type sonar detection system. He had feasted only to have the indigestible nets ball up tightly in his stomach. Even the acids of his digestive tract had been unable to dissolve the plastics. Eventually his inability to see man’s handiwork had cost him his life.

  • • •

  THE SAME NETS AND PLASTICS lan
ding daily on Hawaii’s beaches became beds for monk seals that eventually strangled necks and limbs in boa constrictor fashion. Monk seals, with their innate curiosity and peculiar habit of cuddling beach trash, were especially vulnerable. KP2’s species had the unfortunate distinction of maintaining one of the highest documented rates of entanglement of any seal or sea lion species on earth. Encounters with marine debris were routinely reported across the islands, and the population was hurting as a result. The same month that I met KP2 at the Waikiki Aquarium, a male monk seal pup was born at Koki Beach on East Maui. During his first swimming lesson with his mother in the shallow coastal waters, the pup encountered a ziplock plastic bag. It was the kind typically used by snorkeling tourists to hold bread to feed the reef fish. Out of curiosity, the pup nuzzled the bag only to have the plastic top ring slip around his neck.

  Although he was not in immediate danger, if the bag had remained, the ring would have tightened and eventually cut into his skin as the pup grew older. I had seen this happen with all types of plastics and filament lines on marine mammals around the world, from California sea lions near Santa Cruz to sea otters and Steller sea lions in Alaska. The same was true for fur seals in Africa, and for marine mammals from the Arctic to Antarctica. Plastics were ubiquitous in the oceans.

  As the plastics slowly slice into skin, the victim dies from either infection or from sharks, attracted to the scent of death, that attack the weakened, bleeding victim. The monk seal pup from Maui had been lucky. He eventually figured out a way to swim backward and pulled out of the plastic ring.